Quotes of the day

posted at 9:35 pm on September 21, 2012 by Allahpundit

The election is over, and Mitt Romney lost. He’s toast; his goose is cooked; put a fork in him he’s done; he’s yesterday’s news. Disagree? That’s too bad. The American media have made up their minds. And on this they are certain: Barack Obama is a lock for reelection. They may not be sure when Romney lost exactly—was it his trip to England, Israel, and Poland? Was it the Clint Eastwood speech at the RNC? Was it Romney’s response to the attacks on our embassies in Benghazi and Cairo? Was it his leaked remarks on government dependency? The exact date doesn’t matter. What matters is that the chorus has spoken. The politburo has decided. A consensus has been reached. Romney will lose, and the only question is by how much. The voters might as well stay at home.

The conceited arrogance with which our most sophisticated and well-schooled editors, writers, and journalists voice this conclusion makes it that much more annoying. Their eagerness to judge Romney a failure is not only premature but also erodes whatever credibility they had left. Indeed, the ridiculous manner in which the political press has covered the 2012 campaign suggests that “bias” is no longer a suitable description of the character of the media establishment. “Partisan toadies” may be a better one. “Obama’s army” is another.

Do you want to talk polls? MSM outfits routinely oversample Democrats in their polling, report what they have found with their thumbs in the scale as “news,” all to push a narrative that Obama is winning and Romney is hopelessly losing. Do you want to talk issues? Try finding a fair and factual story on any of the following issues: abortion, same-sex marriage, religious liberties, Mormons, Muslims, evangelicals or just about any other social issue. In the MSM, abortion is always good, everyone supports ssm, none of Obama’s policies have negatively impacted religious liberties, Mormons and evangelicals are always suspect while Muslims are always given the benefit of the doubt. Even when they’re proven mouthpieces for our enemies, like CAIR, the Muslim group that the MSM routinely quotes as benign when they’re the smiley face glued onto the global jihad…

The bottom line is, if you distrust the mainstream media, it’s because you’ve been paying attention.

***

The most underrated and insidious way in which the obvious liberal bias in the mainstream news media has a major impact on public perception is that it acts like a gravitational pull on weak-kneed (Colin Powell, Steve Schmidt) and career-minded (Joe Scarbourgh, Kathleen Parker) “Republicans.” RINOs can instantly feel the warm embrace of mainstream credibility by simply criticizing other Republicans in a way that the media can use to achieve their agenda. Meanwhile, when an occasional Democrat goes in the other direction (Joe Lieberman) they suddenly get shunned and discredited…

These statements of course are critical to the media because without someone from the “other side” to substantiate their outrage over whatever they are claiming was the Romney mistake of the moment, their efforts just don’t work. They need to be able to say: “even prominent Republicans are upset with what Romney is doing.” Noonan, who clearly loves the attention and ability for her to retain her membership in the tight Washington media “club,” is all too happy to oblige.

***

Prior to the video leak, the biggest story in world politics involved the attacks on U.S embassies in Egypt and Libya. But it wasn’t the actual attacks or their regional implications that were the newsworthy issues. Rather, it was the timing and nature of Romney’s response that dominated the media discourse. Apparently, Romney didn’t wait long enough before issuing his statement. And even if he did wait long enough, he shouldn’t have been critical of the Obama administration in the face of a tragedy on foreign soil. The media was quite clear that criticizing a sitting president at such a time is a breach of standards of civility and decency, which up to this point had been respected by all presidential candidates of both parties. Of course, when Obama criticized President Bush in 2007 immediately following the killing of a U.S. diplomatic officer in Iraq, it was simply an important contribution to a robust foreign policy debate.

And before the embassy attacks, the most important political issue of the day was … Clint Eastwood’s speech at the Republican National Convention. Both parties’ conventions featured dozens of important political and industry figures delivering speeches in support of their parties’ respective candidates. The media mostly ignored everyone but Mr. Eastwood, who deviated from the usual script and delivered an unconventional speech. Before even waiting for the dust from the speech to settle and finding out what the actual public reaction was, the media labeled the speech a “bizarre” spectacle, and confidently declared it a “disaster” for the Romney campaign…

The truth is that for the upcoming election, it makes little difference how poorly the economy is doing or how well Romney runs his campaign. Like every political candidate, Romney is bound to make clumsy and self-damaging statements. And each time he does, the media will pounce with a furious sense of urgency, diverting coverage from issues likely to damage Obama’s re-election prospects.

***

There are also, I would argue, other reasons that the media isn’t as trusted as it was in the days when Walter Cronkite would declare “That’s the way it is” as if a 22 minute newscast could possibly sum up what “it” is on a nightly basis. For one thing, there are more choices out there today than there were when we were basically stuck with three networks. In addition to the fact that one can easily choose not to watch the news at all given all the other entertainment options available, the extent to which news on cable has become so corrupted by ideology on both the left (MSNBC) and the right (Fox News Channel) makes it pretty easy to become cynical about the entire business of news to begin with. Add to that the fact that most of the major “news” coverage on the broadcast networks tends to focus on even important topics in the most banal and uninformative ways possible, and it’s easy to see why the reputation of the news business as a whole has declined in recent years…

Finally, the bizarre reality of our cable news networks, where more time is spent talking about what the news means rather than what the news is. You can see this most clearly in the coverage from all three cable networks (and much of the coverage on the broadcast networks) involves talking about who’s up or down in the polls, what’s going on inside various campaigns, or inane gaffes that the voters clearly don’t care about very much. When people turn on the political coverage and see talking heads talking about things that only resonate inside the Beltway, it’s not surprise that they turn away in disgust. Additionally, it strikes me that this entire model does harm to the reputation of journalism as a profession because the same people who are supposed to be reporting the facts are turning around and giving their opinions on those facts. There ought to be a brighter line between the two if journalists want people to start trusting them again.

***

You see they are desperate. The reality of Barack Obama has brought them to their knees. If he loses in November, the mainstream media will be shown for what they are — shills for what they wanted and pretended to be true, and not tellers of truth.

What is left for them when there is no more Barack?

Will anyone take seriously the relentless attacks on President Romney they will be sure to prosecute? No one but the most committed progressive will ever believe a word they say again, especially after they not only gave Barack Obama a free ride for all of his years in office, but unconvincingly attempted to redefine his every failure as success…

A defeat for Barack is a defeat for them. No longer will they be the exalted press — the arbiter of truth and justice. After the debacle that is Barack Obama, they will be seen for what they are: publicity agents for progressivism.

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